Poster Analysis

As you are approaching filming your short films, it is worth considering what your poster will look like. This is because the best time to shoot pictures for your poster is when you already have your cast in costume and on location.

You MUST NOT create a poster from a screen shot of the production footage. You should carefully consider how your poster will communicate ideas about your film's themes, genre, narrative, characters and style.

Take this poster (click it for higher quality version):

Essentially you should analyse the poster's media langauge to offer an interpretation of how it communicates. The media language consists of: 

Image (shot size, composition, mise en scene, colour correction and effects)

Title (typeface, font size and effects)

Tagline (typeface and font size - also enigmatic relationship to title)

Billing block (institutional info and logos)

Other textual information may include:

Release date

Actor's/Director's/Producer's names

Awards and nominations

Affiliations (eg Quentin Tarantino Presents...)

Quotes/Blurbs (eg "AMAZING!!!" - The Daily Mail)

So in this poster the main image is a big close up of a ceramic human face with a blank (almost dead) expression. It is lying on a tarmac ground, broken, with shards of ceramic scattered about. The realistic human hair gives the image an unsettling atmosphere, and the breakage hints at themes of the fragility of human existance. 

The title 'Still Life' appears in a clean, modern, sans serif font and is relatively small compared to the main image. It appears in white and red, both of which have long-standing cultural significance including connotations such as purity and passion... but in this case, along with the broken human face they call to mind the red and white of blood and bandages signified by symbols such as the red cross or the barber's candy-striped pole.

The tagline, "Not everything appears as it seems" has at least two layers of enigmatic resonance. Firstly as it hints at a deeper meaning behind the broken human face - perhaps this replica is more than it seems - but on on closer examination the word 'appears' might have more than one sense to it. Really, the line ought to read "Not everything IS as it seems". The use of the word "appears" adds an additional ambiguity. Secondly the use of 'Not everything' instead of 'Nothing' suggests some things do 'appear as they seem'.

The billing block is overlaid on a red-tinted background which continues to blood theme.

This analysis could go further to decipher how the combination of all the above communicates ideas of genre and narrative. How the style reflects the style of cinematography of the film. How it appeals to its target audience. Etc.

You should analyse at least two posters before starting to design your own. When you design your own, sketch out two or three potential designs so you know how to pose your actors and how to compose your shots. You should take at least 20 different shots to give you options when it comes to sitting down in front of Photoshop and designing your poster.

Stuck? Nothing to do?... Nonsense, read...

Research type stuff

·         Key concept analysis (prompts on the blog hub)
·         Industry and Audience investigation (prompts on the blog hub)
·         Case study of a short filmmaker (do some research into someone who has made a short film or two)
·         Textual analysis of a short film (camera, editing, sound, mise en scene)
·         Target audience research
·         Target audience profile
·         Major influences  (collection of feature film extracts/short films/art/TV/visual media with discussion of how they might influence your production work).
·         Short film post analysis x2 (use key concepts)
·         Short film magazine article/review analysis x2

Planning/progress type stuff

·         Pitch (made up of treatment, genre/narrative research, target audience research, major influences and any sketches or drafts of key shots and film style).
·         Treatment (the whole idea written down)
·         Step outline (write down the narrative in shot by shot sections – prep for storyboard)
·         Location recce (photos of each location with notes on how they will be used)
·         Storyboard (digital photography – 20-30 panels)
·         Test shots – edited and colour-corrected to experiment with various looks/styles
·         Costume designs (can be photos/downloads)
·         Production schedule
·         Sound design – investigations into soundtracks and sound effects
·         Production notes and up-dates (if relevant – DON’T pad out your number blog posts by writing things like “we wanted to film today but couldn’t coz it was raining, lol”)
·         Paper edit – evidence of correctly logging and naming each clip.  (There will be NO list of clips which looks like this “Untitled clip 001, Untitled clip 002 etc”)
·         Editor’s journal – like the production up-dates, the editor should take occasion screen-shots of their progress and update the blog (for both in the group)
·         Article script
·         Poster photo-shoot
·         Poster drafts (sketches of what your poster will look like)
·         Article layout drafts (ditto)
·         Poster/Article production & post-production updates – EG screen-shots of your Photoshop and InDesign work.
·         LAST POST BEFORE EVALUATION SHOULD BE SHORT FILM FINAL CUT, FINISHED POSTER & FINISHED ARTICLE.

Short Film - Industry and Audience

Your next few posts should aim to answer the following questions:

1. Why do short films get made?... seeing as the vast majority don't actually make any money.
2. How do they get made? - what are the various sources of funding?
3. How are they distributed and exhibited? - what festivals exist? what other forms of exhibition exist?
4. Who is the audience for short film in general?
5. Who is the audience for the short films you have looked at?
6. WHO ARE YOU MAKING A SHORT FILM FOR?

For the first three questions on funding and exhibition use the "useful links" at the bottom left of this page. Those links also have further links to other excellent websites, so don't stop there, surf about for the most info you can find.

You can summarise your findings or quote directly, but make sure you reference the sites by adding links to them in your blog post.

For the last three questions on audience a good place to start is this excellent guide produced by an enterprising media teacher at Ravens Wood School:

Target Audience from Ravens Wood School

Key Concept Analysis

To kick off your new coursework topic and to introduce you to the key concepts of all your A2 work you must start blogging a KEY CONCEPT ANALYSIS.

Use two or three short films to answer all the promts under each key concept.

Representation

-          What are some typical representations to be found in short film?

-          How are they constructed?... (in short, producer has a limited time in which to establish representations)

-          What are the stereotypes being used?

-          How do representations differ between the different countries/ideologies/narratives of the short films?

Media Language (Codes and Conventions)

-          What is some typical film language used in short film? (camera, editing, sound, mise en scene)

-          How long do they last?

-          How short can they be?

-          How are they constructed in terms of dialogue/action/story-telling?

Institutions

-          Who process short films?

-          How are they distributed?

-          Where are they exhibited?

-          How are they promoted?

-          Festivals? Competitions? Other events?

Audience

-          Who is the audience for short film? (demographics/psychographics- 4cs)

-          What uses/gratifications do they have for them? (why do they like/watch them?)

-          How is the audience addressed? (Mode of address)

-           

Genre

-          What are the genres?

-          Can short film be described as a genre in its own right?

-          What are the generic conventions of short film?

-          Do they differ from feature film genres?

-          What are the defining characteristics of those genres? Eg location/iconography/era/narrative/characters and actors

Narrative

-          How are the narratives of short film different from feature film?

-          What are some of the typical narratives?

-          Are there any narrative conventions? (eg twist in the tale/punch-line)

-          Enigma....

-          Look up and apply to short film Barthes’ narrative codes.

Note to Moderator

Please find links to the work requested for the sample below

385; AKEL, SOFIA
1340; KALUKEMBI, JEREMIAH
428; CREESE, LEAH
487; KOYE, SOMAH
3420; DAVIES, ELINA
3770; DENHAM, MATTHEW FREDERICK
438; ELEBUTE, BLESSING JOSHUA
3436; FUMANY, MYLENE
18; ALDIS, BEN
8507; SQUIRES, LEE KEITH

Many thanks for your time. Do please get in touch should you require any assistance or clarification.

Evaluation

You should all now be wrapping up all elements of your coursework.

Reminder about marks:

Planning and Research: 20
Teaser trailer: 40
Poster: 10
Magazine: 10
Evaluation: 20

The evaluation must answer 4 essential questions:

In what ways does your media product use, develop or challenge forms and conventions of real media products?

This refers to the conventions of teaser trailers, film posters and magazine covers, and is not limited to genre conventions. You might consider the following prompts to answer this question:

- how long is your trailer?
- how many clips did you use?
- how much of the film narrative is revealed?
- what transitions/captions/graphics etc did you use?
- where is your trailer intended to be shown?
- In what ways do all of the above reinforce/challenge/develop the usual way of doing things of real teaser trailers?
- How did you go about designing your poster?
- What information did you include? (actors names? release date? etc)
- How did you chose the main image?
- What were your influences?
- How did you chose the name of your magazine?
- Why did you chose the colour scheme that you've used?
- Describe the creative process of laying out the cover - 

How effective is the combination of your main product and ancillary texts?

This question is all about the extent to which all 3 production tasks - the trailer, the poster and the magazine cover - are a unified promotional campaign.
- Who are the target audience for each of the productions? (same as each other? different?)
- How are the products targeting that audience?
- Have you used any motifs which are recognisable across all 3 products?
- Are there any other themes, enigmas or style elements (such as fonts/graphics) which unify the products?

What have you learned from your audience feedback?

For this you need to show your rough-cut or final video to as many people as possible and ask them for feedback.

- You should aim to use Youtube and/or social media to do this.
- We can also do this in class - both media and film classes are viable audience focus groups.
- You be quite critical of your work. Does the genre come across? Is a sense of the narrative established? Does it generate enigma? etc.
- How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

How did you use media technologies in the construction and research, planning and evaluation stages?

As with your AS coursework, this should be quite a technical discussion of the hardware and software you have used.

- You need to be quite detailed in discussion of technologies.
- Don't just say that you used, say, Photoshop - describe exactly how you used it, which tools, filters, blending options did you use to achieve certain effects?
- What were the limitations of the technology? - for example the hardware we use is still based on DV tapes, which require you to digitise the footage, shooting direct to SD cards would have speeded up the process.
- Discuss your use of the blog.

As always, this must be presented creatively making full use of the blog's capabilities. That means...

DON'T JUST UPLOAD A 4-PART ESSAY TO YOUR BLOG
DON'T JUST UPLOAD A POWERPOINT TO SCRIBD AND PUT THAT ON YOUR BLOG
DO - use images, video and text together
DO - use hyperlinks and tags
DO - have links to your group's blogs

LASTLY....

Your evaluation questions need to be very clearly labelled and identifiable. You could easily lose marks if they are not identified as being the evaluation.

You should also upload the finished trailer (via Youtube/Vimeo), poster and magazine to your blog clearly identified as the final versions of each along with a brief outline of your role in its production.

Audience research and reception

Group leaders! Post a summary of your group's research into the audience reception of Paranormal Activity - make sure that you consider which of the two effects models that we have studied apply to your findings